Remembering the very forgettable replacements
ByAs part of the spate of baseball books that hit shelves this year, Chris Donnelly’s Baseball’s Greatest Series: Yankees, Mariners, and the 1995 Matchup That Changed History arrived in my mailbox last week, and I launched into it last night. The book, which I’ll review when I’m through with it, takes place in a different era than the one we know today. Some of the names — Andy Pettitte, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey — still resonate in the game in 2010, but in 1995, the game had reached a nadir.
For months, there was no baseball. It is almost inconceivable now to imagine that the owners and players would be at such loggerheads as to allow a strike to happen, but as the owners pushed for a salary cap and the players resisted, baseball ended on August 12, 1994. I was 11 and devastated. That Yankee team was the best of my early fandom years, and when the World Series was canceled, the team and its fans were heartbroken.
As the days ticked on, the owners and players remained at a stalemate, and teams could not afford to sacrifice the season. Enter the replacement players. In an effort to field any sort of baseball team, the owners began the hunt for non-union players who would be willing to cross picket lines for a professional baseball paycheck or a dream fulfilled. As February neared, teams refused to unveil their assembled rosters of replacement players.
The first conflict to come up arose with the managers and coaches. These men were not players union members and were employees of their owners. Fiercely loyal to their players, as Buck Showalter explained, the on-field coaching staff members had to decide between their boss and their players. Most of them reluctantly went to Spring Training, hoping for a quick end to the strike. On the eve of Spring Training, Showalter did not have high hopes for his rag-tag bunch of players.
So who were these guys better suited to softball leagues than Spring Training fields, resembling the Bad News Bears more than the first-place Yankees? Well, for starters, one man who wasn’t there and opting against going stands out. As Jack Curry detailed, 20-year-old Derek Jeter, then the Yanks’ top prospect, refused to join the replacement players. For many minor leaguers not part of the union yet, the invitation to a Big League camp would prove alluring simply because many knew 1995 would be their best and only shot at breaking camp with a big league club.
“I wouldn’t go no matter what,” Jeter said to The Times. “Easy question, easy answer. If someone is out there striking for me, it would be like stabbing them in the back if I played. I wouldn’t do that.”
For those who went to camp, their only shots at fame came as replacement players, and the names are indeed forgettable. Joe Ausenio, a pitcher I once saw in the early 1990s in Oneonta, didn’t go, but his roommate Mark Carper showed up to camp. Showalter said those two would never have even been in consideration for the team a year before. Doug Cinnella, currently a Reds scout, was 30 and had bounced around the minors, playing for the Orioles, Expos and Mets before arriving in camp in 1995.
The other names sound even less familiar. John DiGirolamo dropped a pop up and couldn’t get a good swing off of Nelson Perpetuo in an intra-squad match up. Tim Byron was a teacher who had not pitched professionally since 1986. Scott Epps, a bad Yankee farmhand, summed up the replacement mentality. “I don’t think they see me as a prospect,” he said 15 years ago. “For that reason, I have to do what is best for me. Right now, this is an outstanding opportunity.”
When the games started, the results were ugly. Few fans showed up, and the quality of play was abysmal. Players — such as 250-pound Matt Stark, out of baseball since 1990, who crushed a metal folding chair when he sat down — made headlines for the wrong reasons, and as March wore on the players and owners had to find a solution. It took an injunction against the owners to get the players back on the field, but it was just in the nick of a time. A replacement season would have been even worse.
Today, the replacement players have largely faded from memory. A few — Kevin Millar, Ron Mahay, Shane Spencer — eventually reached the majors, but most faded from baseball’s history books. Those replacement players were denied union membership and were tarred with the feathers of the strike. It is a moment baseball would be wise to avoid repeating again.
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I’m the same age as you and when the strike hit and I remember it being like the world was coming to a halt. My dad tried to explain it to me but my only thoughts were “What the hecks a union?” and “Why in gods name would anybody ever decide not to play baseball?”
I was excited about baseball coming back until I realized the replacements weren’t fit to carry mattingly’s gear around. I’m glad(obviously) we ended up getting the season we did in 95.
A few — Kevin Millar, Ron Mahay, Shane Spencer — eventually reached the majors, but most faded from baseball’s history books. Those replacement players were denied union membership and were tarred with the feathers of the strike.
So is Millar & co not in the union now?
Correct. Replacement players are never allowed into the union.
Ouch, makes sense though
Fun fact: baseball scabs also work as coal miners in the off-season.
(This may not actually be true.)
So what does it mean for these players that don’t enter the union?
“All it amounts to, basically, is not receiving a share of licensing money, which isn’t that big a loss considering major league salaries. The nonunion players don’t have votes in Players Association matters but they do receive pensions and are represented in arbitration.”
http://www.boston.com/sports/b....._outdated/
They also aren’t in any baseball video game.
My cousin was a replacement player for the Mets; we don’t talk to him anymore.
Because he was on the Mets or because he was a replacement player?
It’s the Mets thing. In my eyes, he’s present day Benedict Arnold.
I don’t blame you
ietc
Your cousin is Daniel Murphy?
ICWUDT
Can’t wait for your review. I adored that team. It was my college roommate that brought me back to the Yankees in 1992-93. As a kid, George’s penchant for trading away his players for a new toy bothered me, and it was hard to root for the uniform. With George gone and Buck and Stick doing things right, my roomie persuaded me that things had changed.
It was the rare time the Yanks didn’t lead in payroll, and in fact was a team you really could root for. In the end, it was a losing prospect. Mattingly’s last year, the last before the Jeter/Torre era, and the damned strike likely kept the Bombers out of one more World Series.
I remember sitting in a blistering hot box of an office in 1993 listening to Abbott toss his no hitter. I remember the M’s in 94 walking the Yankee lineup, and the abuse the Seattle dugout suffered at the hands of Lou Pinella. In ’95, no one believed me when I said the strike was over, because of the proximity to April Fool’s Day. I remember the Yankee staff falling to pieces, and watching a parade of kids like Sterling Hitchcock, Domingo Jean, Andy Pettite and Mariano Rivera get tryouts in the Bronx.
But most of all I remember that series. First ALDS ever, and it was beautiful. I didn’t care that we lost. If we had to lose, that’s the way to do it. Nothing easy for either team. To be honest, I’m not even sure the ’96 series matched it (though the outcome was obviously more favorable).
A professional union, that term always bothered me. Paid to play baseball, a dream of any kid and now the issue is how much above $500,000 a year, plus per diem and travel they are going to make. There are clearly some terrible owners but these guys have tens of millions on the line in their business.
We now have players in all sports, carrying guns, doing drugs, with agents and union representatives who look at the game as a business and not just a sport.
If there is another union-management conflict I frankly hope that management holds out. The players demands have got out of hand. The press has not helped by making the Yankees and Red Sox look like the evil empire because they attract fans to their venues and those who do not show up tune in to watch the games with TV revenue. Some other teams and players are like cry babies forgetting that when the successful teams visit their stadiums, attendance and revenue increases by 20 to 30%.
Players moving or being traded is nothing new, remember the Babe or for that matter Marris and Mays? The strike killed the blue jays who never really recovered.
“The players demands have got out of hand.”
What are even their current demands? No salary cap and no blood testing? I know they wanted the Marlins to spend more money, but even some owners wanted that too.
No blood testing? That’s weird.
Why would they want that?
Sports and baseball in particular is the only venue in which people constantly complain about the working class (the players) getting as much money as they can from the uber rich owners.
Sure, the players have it good, but I can’t support what the owners were trying to do in 1994. This is the same group that had colluded repeatedly to drive salaries down, and attempt to coerce the players into accepting a salary cap, because “multiple clubs would go bankrupt otherwise.” As we’ve seen, this is clearly not the case.
And when you say “Blue Jays”, I think you mean “Expos”.
That makes sense – no wonder Shane Spencer in MVP 2005 was LANCE ASUNCION.
Wasn’t he Larry Reed?
[Comment From Steve: ]
Chad did you see Jerry Thornton’s piece over on WEEI about geeks taking over the world? Was that satire? What I don’t get (and I’m a Yankee fan), is that there are so many people bashing Theo for using sabermetrics and not RBI to judge players. Do they really want to go back to the way it was done for 85 years before Theo got here?
Friday March 12, 2010 1:24 Steve
1:28
Chad Finn:
I didn’t see it, but I’ll check it out. Jerry’s stuff is usually outstanding. In general, though, I think people who categorically dismiss sabermetrics are exposing themselves as pretty closed-minded. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I love baseball aesthetically, and I’m probably TOO nostalgic about it, but I also get a lot of joy from learning to look at the game from different angles and perspectives. Some of the sabermetric stuff I like (OPS+, VORP), some I don’t, but it’s not an all or nothing proposition, you know? There are a lot of way to evaluate and enjoy the game.
Finn is a good writer at the Boston Globe, he essentially blogs and does a media column. I really hope he reads and addresses Thornton’s nonsense.
shit,wrong thread
Ben: Ausanio didn’t show up to replacement camp, the article was about him staying home while his AAA roommate (Carper) showing up. Can’t have misinformation out there about a fellow Hudson Valley guy.
You got it, Mr. D. I misread that article. Post’s been updated.
The MLB players union is a joke. Unions were formed to keep mistreatment and to make sure of fair wages. This union does non of that. More money for the already making too much money for what they do. I am a big fan of Kevin Millar. He is one of the little guys that made it.. I know him personally. There are a lot of reasons that have never been made public why so many signed up to be replacement players. It is really easy for Jeter to say “No Way” He was never in that position. What the players were fighting for in 94 had nothing to do with fairness. Many players have been very public about how they feel. They are a bunch of dirt bags, many who never had to have their careers threatened. Lord forbid if the few who did make it to the BIGs ever were admitted. Make take some of the others money away. FYI not being in the union does not effect retirement, insurance and such.
Sorry, but most of these players entered into this game with a very, very high chance of wasting a few years and failing to get out of A ball. Very, very few were drafted as high prospects and fast tracked to the big leagues. For decades they were treated as chattle, paid what they were told they’d be paid, where they were told to play or, for all intents, get banned from the game.
Remember at the time of the strike, the real battle was between big and small market owners, with the small market owners threatening to impose arbitrary earning limits on their players (but not on the owners). The owners could well have just let the negotiations continue, but they decided to play hard ball and lost.
And lest we forget, the owners weren’t exactly worthy of any trust on the part of the players. They had been caught colluding to keep salaries low, and insisted half the teams were losing money, but wouldn’t let the players check the books to verify.
In the end, no player has to be paid any more than any owner wants to pay him. The problem is still between the owners and there is no reason the players should give up a penny without some concessions from them.
I don’t understand the hostility to the players. It’s not as if the owners are going to donate all the savings to charity if they pay the players less.
Baseball is a business. Fans buy tickets, advertisers sponsor TV and radio, etc. Why shouldn’t the players negotiate for as much of that as they can? Does anyone think the old reserve clause system was fairer somehow?
The Players Association became a union in 1966 in response to decades of exploitation by the owners. Through it the players finally attained the rights they should have been entitled to under the 1937 Wagner act. In addition, they forced the owners to interpret the Reserve Clause the same way that federal Courts had been interpreting it for other sports. These were signal acheivements that could not have been attained without being unionized.
The union’s failing lies in its support of individual players at the expense of the game as a whole. Individual players were cheating//breaking the law by using PED. Legally, they had rights against search and Seizure without a warrant. For safety reasons, these rights can be and are often waived by unions.
In the case of Baseball, the safety reasons are weak. PED will seldom physically harm anyone except the person imbiding them. Thus at first glance, the use of PED harms only the user, and the use gets the benefit of better compensation for his play. It is the Achilles’s choice or Glory vs a Long Life.
What the players Association leadership failed to recognize is that allowing so many players immunity from detection when they use PED without prescription (i,e, on an illegal basis) would sooner or later present each an every player with the following choice: DO I CONCEDE A COMPETETIVE ADVANTAGE or do I DISREGARD THE LAW AND RULES OF THE GAME? In protecting the 20% who were cheating from legal prosecution, the Major League Players Union ecompromised the integrity of the game and the economic interests of the other 80% of the players. The terms of testing were a matter for collective bargaining, but for the health of the industry the Union should have simply accepted the testing in return for some protections against errors and public disclosures. This could have been negotiated in a matter of a week rather than taking years to resolve.
The MLPA officials will tell us that protecting players legal rights is the reason for unions in the first place. That is not true. Unions are NOT supposed to protect members from the consequences of violations of STATUTORY LAW–doing so would make the union part of a criminal conspiracy. The union is suppoed to be protecting the members from MANAGEMENT VIOLATIONS of the terms of the negotiated agreements and any applicable statutes. In this one instance, the owners had my full support.